A RECENT report from Historic England has highlighted four places in this country with links to slavery.

However, controversy has arisen over links to slavery in Lincolnshire.

Speaking to the BBC, Tory MP Sir John Hayes said that the report ought to be “shredded”.

The MP for South Holland and the Deepings also suggested that the project was a waste of taxpayer’s money – Historic England has spent £15,000 on the project.

Still, the politician also clarified: “Of course slavery was awful and of course it was right we abolished it, but I am not sure we need to go through this kind of comprehensive report linking tangentially all kinds of places and buildings to that effort.”

The report, which collates information that was already widely publicly available highlights that Blankney, Burghley House, Little Ponton Hall and Woodhall Spa in Lincolnshire have links to the slave trade. This may be because families that owned these properties were compensated for the end of the slave trade, grew rich in the West Indies or enslaved Jamaican people.

The organisation has responded to the controversy by issuing their own statement.

“At Historic England our role, as laid out in the National Heritage Act, is to champion, protect and advance the public’s knowledge of all of England’s historic environment,” it reads.

“In February 2020, we commissioned an audit which brings together pre-existing, publicly available research into the tangible traces of the transatlantic slave trade in England’s built environment, mostly carried out over the last 30 years by universities and community groups.

“By bringing all known research on this subject into one place, the audit has provided a comprehensive overview of this subject and identified gaps in our collective knowledge. New knowledge gained through research in this area would be used to enhance information about listed places on the National Heritage List for England, so we can tell a more complete story of our country’s remarkable, rich and complex history.

“Our job is to focus on facts in an impartial way; we are not making moral judgements. By sharing knowledge of England’s history, as told through the fabric of our buildings and sites, our aim is that they become better understood and protected.

“In the cases where sites encompass parts of our history that do not represent today’s moral standards, our approach is not to remove or ignore them but to provide thoughtful information and powerful reinterpretation. This is summed up in our approach to “retain and explain” our heritage. We can do that in a more meaningful way when our knowledge is backed up by rigorous, academic research.”